(Note: I realize this was written aptly about earlier today by kossack Walter Einenkel here. I just thought I'd add to the conversation on this very important subject.)
That said...
Combined with the widespread use of 'bodycams' this new handgun may just give citizens the upperhand in holding law enforcement accountable for the heavy-handed tactics they use.
America's law enforcement personnel reached a new milestone last year. As of December 2013, America's local military apparatus had officially killed more of its own citizens in the last ten years than the Iraq War. And by a pretty good margin, too: around 5,000 domestic deaths by terrorist-with-badge to 4,489 deaths by terrorist-with-turban. The 10 months since then have claimed about another 500 - which means that as of right now, American cops are officially more lethal than Ebola.
Something has to be done to stem the epidemic of indiscriminate force; and short of equipping police with pointy sticks, the most effective thing is likely accountability. Or so believes a Silicon Valley startup company called Yardarm Technologies.
The concept of utilizing electronics in the goal of advancing gun safety is not new. In fact, it's decades old. Recently, Americans Against the Tea Party ran a
story profiling seventeen-year-old Kai Kloefer who developed a cellphone-grade fingerprint scanner that essentially served as an electronic safety for handguns. In operation, the scanner only took milliseconds to read the user's fingerprint, subsequently releasing the safety, which allowed the gun to be fired quickly... but only by its legal owner.
As good as Kai's idea is, Yardarm's idea may even be better...
The story comes to us from Americans Against the Tea Party via Raw Story.
Yardarm's idea is a little different. Rather than keeping the gun from firing, Yardarm's USB flash drive-sized device simply fits inside the gun's "backstrap" (the removable rear part of the grip), and hides away inside when the backstrap is screwed back on. It doesn't mechanically interface with the gun at all.
What it does do is record the gun's exact position, when it's fired (down to the millisecond) and the direction that it's fired. Said Jim Schaff, Yardarm's marketing VP:
"It's the same kind of sensor your iPhone uses to change the screen from vertical to horizontal when you turn the phone to the side. But ours is way more powerful."
It's actually two sensors in one, and works using most of the same principles as a cell phone. The sensor Schaff refers to is an "accelerometer," which uses piezoelectric load cells wrapped around a small weight to detect motion and orientation. It also connects wirelessly to the "Yardarm Cloud" via an extended-range connection to a smartphone, laptop, tablet, or to the patrol car's computer-aided dispatch (CAD) or Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) dashboard.
Perhaps even more significant, the prototype also has a GPS positioning sensor. When it's combined with the accelerometer and wireless connection capabilities, it will allow the sensor to:
• Record when and where the gun is holstered and unholstered.
• Record the exact time and location of each shot fired.
• Determine the direction and up/down trajectory of the gun in real time
• Automatically notify dispatch and call for backup when the weapon is drawn
• Allow commanding officers to precisely monitor where the gun is and where it's pointed in real-time from a computer screen back at base.
This is undeniably a win/win for citizens. Computers (so far) harbor no biases. They don't 'bleed blue'. In fact, they don't bleed at all. Just think, if Officer Darren Wilson's gun had been outfitted with this device not only would Wilson most likely have already been indicted -- more importantly -- there's an even better chance Michael Brown would be alive today.
By itself, the accountability aspect may be a hard sell to law enforcement agencies, especially those agencies that rely for the most part on the lack of it. But the advantages of this technology may outweigh their dependance on unaccountability.
• One such advantage to the officer responding to a call is that the device automatically calls for backup when the weapon is unholstered, the officer doesn't have to. That prevents "every officer's nightmare scenario," in which they're pinned down with no way to call for help.
• Another is that the gun's and network's ability to track orientation in real-time allows commanders to precisely vector in assistance from other directions, without relying on vague descriptions like "He's a little ways back from the wooden fence." By simply keeping his weapon trained on the suspect, the officer tells his commander exactly where the suspect is.
• A third advantage could factor in even more broadly in a tactical sense. The entire system runs through Yardarm's cloud service. Consequently, officers on the scene/in the field could receive real time information from the handguns belonging to other officers.
There's more; the very safety of officers:
You could imagine a scenario in which officers in the near future might use something like a Google Glass headset during dangerous situations. The headset might display a 3-D map with real-time trajectory lines from other officers' weapons. So, say you're sneaking through a house, looking to take down three or four hostage-takers.
If the officers outside have any line of sight on any or all of them, or even know about where they are if they're behind cover, they can keep their weapons trained on the hostage-taker's location. If you're sneaking through the house, you can effectively use the other officers' eyes to keep a constant fix on the perps' positions around you without having to waste time and make noise communicating with those outside.
It would certainly prove incredibly useful for teams of police working in conjunction with each other at a crime scene. Not only that but it could prevent civilian deaths as well, considering the fact that there are more than an average of 40,000 military style police raids each year... and many of those raids are conducted on the wrong residence.
Will this new handgun solve the police brutality program in America? Probably not. But adding a significant layer of accountability to any law enforcement scenario would certainly force officers to think twice before pulling their handguns out when stopping soccer moms and minorities both.
It's time we balanced police officers' instinctive fear for their lives -- with an inherent fear of them losing their jobs and freedom.